Thursday, 24 October 2013

Lessons from Psychology: Attribution

Once I signed in for the Social Psychology program
I started feeling, I should have studied psychology much earlier. I would have
caused less pain to others who came in contact with me and would have made more
people happy.

The course made me aware about cause and effect
relationship (causal relationship) between behavior and motives, values,
feelings, situations etc. We behave in the manner we behave because of two sets
of factors, I have learnt. I can not claim this to be perfect understanding,
since I have not scored perfect 100 percent in the course, and to that extent
the understanding is subject to correction by those who are Psychology
professionals.

Human behavior can be attributed to factors which
are internal to one-self like personality characteristics, beliefs and values;
and the other set of factors which are external or situational. We have more
control over internal factors and relatively less control over external
factors.

In social
psychology I learnt, attribution
is the process of inferring the causes of events or behaviors. Attribution is
something we all do every day, usually without any awareness of the underlying
processes and biases that lead to our inferences. In course of a normal day we
probably make numerous attributions about our own behavior as well as that of
the people around us.

The studies provided me with the reasons why do we
attribute certain behavior to internal characteristics while blaming external
forces for others? Our biases play a major role when we attribute reasons for
behaviors. The attributions we make every day are related to our feelings
as well as how we think and relate to other people.

As we seek to explain the reasons and causes for
our as well as others’ behaviors, we are prone to falling victim to a number of
cognitive biases and errors. Our perceptions of events are often distorted by
our past experiences, our expectations and our own needs.

Reflect on the following possible common types of
errors we commit while attributing causes.

Can you recall the last time you received a good
grade in an exam. Chances are that you attributed your success to internal
factors, your expertise, your preparations etc. "I did well because I am
smart" or "I did well because I studied and was well-prepared"
are two common explanations you might use to justify your performance.

What happened when you received a poor grade,
though? Social psychologists
have found that in such situations, you are more likely to attribute your
failure to external forces. "I failed because the teacher included tricky
questions" or "The classroom was so hot that I couldn't
concentrate" are examples of attributions one might come up with to explain poor performance. Notice that both of these explanations lay the blame on
outside forces rather than accepting personal responsibility.

Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the self-serving bias. So why are we more
likely to attribute our success and positive behavior to our personal
characteristics and blame outside variables for our failures or negative
behaviors? Researchers believe that blaming external factors for failures and
disappointments helps protect self-esteem.

Is it not that while we protect self esteem, we
are ignoring need to improve? Looking for reasons beyond us, leads to thwarting
our development, since we look for reasons beyond our control and ignore those
which are within our control.

And what happens when it comes to other people’s
failures or negative behavior? We tend to attribute causes to internal factors
such as their personality characteristics and ignore or minimize impact of external
variables. Psychologists refer to this tendency as the fundamental attribution error; even though situational
variables are very likely to be present, we automatically attribute the cause to
internal characteristics.

Both these, self serving bias and attribution
errors can be viewed as subjective evaluation of reality. Such subjective
evaluation is, most of the time, cause for strained relationships and
bitterness. And that leads me to conclude that i must practice to be objective in evaluating reality.

I will make it a point to end each lesson with
action areas for peace in immediate society and groups we normally be part of.